"Badder Than Brooklyn" is the debut album of Toronto's heavy metal veterans Decatur. The album was produced by Gojira's Joe Duplantier at his studio in New York City, Silvercord Studios. Located in the iconic neighborhood of Brooklyn, the band pays homage to the place they recorded their debut album with its name. "Joe is such an artist," says vocalist and guitar player Jay Sarrazin, "It's hard to find someone who has that kind of depth and knowledge of music. I think working with people I respect so much and who have so much knowledge in what they do is probably the greatest learning experience I've ever had. We're a bunch of nobodies but they treated us like we were Metallica."

The ten track album is an eclectic powerhouse. Drawing on a wide variety of musical influences, everything from blues to hip-hop to pop music, Decatur takes you on a musical journey across a wide variety of heavy soundscapes. Growing up listening to bands such as Metallica, Pantera and Slayer the band gives fresh new life to a familiar sound that we have all grown to love. “We just love music. Music gives different feelings in so many different ways, you shouldn’t be limited to what creates that emotion in you. You should be able to like what you want, and I think that’s our goal as a band, to play whatever we want.”

Into The Night off Decatur's debut record "Badder Than Brooklyn" produced by Joe Duplantier

Shying away from the guttural vocals and extreme heaviness one might come to expect from today’s metal, Decatur is bringing back good old fashioned metal and paying their respect to that classic sound. "We wanted to write something that we love," says Jay, "not just write for what’s cool right now. It’s easy to go find guys who shred a million notes a minute and blast beat all day. It would be easy to do that but that's just not what we're about."

Just because they are not shredding "a million notes a minute" does not mean that they don't shred however. Every single guitar solo on this album is dripping with precision and is masterfully curated to fit the feel of each song perfectly. The band really took their time with this record, meticulously going over every aspect of the sound until they were all satisfied with the end product, and did it ever pay off. We are left with groove laden gold such as the track "Vegas Girl" and the title track "Badder Than Brooklyn." Each member of the band really gets a chance to shine through on the final track "Internal War pt.2" which is an instrumental journey in itself and my personal favorite track off of the album. “Our goal was to give a different look, a different taste, a different style, a different feel on every song. We were focused on pushing our own boundaries, pushing our own limits and stepping out of our comfort zones. That was the mind set we went with when we wrote each song.”